We Were Frail
by MaverickPaxAPunch
Summary: Love Checkauf lives with the burden of entering the afterlife each time she sleeps - a shapeless, colorless dominion where she experiences the Hell of the others around her. Cordelia hopes she can help her learn about her powers - and pluck the innocent from an undeserved afterlife. But Descensum is not the only risk - witch hunters have risen again and threaten the new coven.
1. White Nothing

If you're a reader of my Asylum story - sorry! I haven't posted a chapter in quite some time, Lana and Wendy would be disappointed in me. But I'm working on it!

Love Checkauf, a young witch who can dance between life and death with no penalty, enlists the help of Cordelia Goode to control her dark abilities. A specific Hell haunts her nightmares when she starts attending the Academy - Misty Day's neverending torment.

Cordelia blames herself for Misty's death and undeserved entrapment, but Love could be her token to pluck Misty back to the land of the living - but portals that are opened may not stay closed.

White Nothing

"What is interference?"

Cordelia glanced across the audience of young ladies who were, almost exclusively, trailing their eyes on her like she was their individual beacon. Cordelia could barely resist noticing the way their energies hummed around her whenever she spoke, whether it was teaching, scolding, or asking what was requested for breakfast. The way desperate creatures looked from their splattered-across-the-road resting places - their eyes mimicked the sheer innocence of pea brained deer in contorted ditch positions.

Striding across the front of the greenhouse, the headmistress brushed her fingertips across the top of her hazel plant. With a silky sigh under her breath of surgere amicum, the spiny yellow petals grew upward, reaching towards the stone ceiling. The intelligent eyes trained on her again, and she smiled. Cordelia had a very attractive smile, the kind that drew people in. One thing she inherited from Fiona, though Delia's was completely sincere. Unfortunately, something she was incredibly self conscious about.

"As Americans, we have a special horror of giving up control, or letting things happen in their own way without interference. William Borroughs once said that." She put her hands on her hips and brushed her fingers against the waistband of her pants. "So, what is it? Interference..."

"Is it..." The first voice began, softer than usual, and Cordelia picked out the head of a brunette girl resting near the back wall. Her eyeliner was extremely thick and winged at the ends, she reminded her of Hamlet's Ophelia. The stringy locks of hair hung halfway in her face, though she didn't bother with it. "A disturbance."

"Getting there, Bree." The Supreme leaned against the rectangular wooden table and tapped her manicured nails against the rough surface. Greenish bits of parsley were still stuck underneath them from earlier. "According to Oxford's English Dictionary, interference means "to prevent a process or activity from continuing or being carried out properly." Pausing, she raised an eyebrow.

"The point of me asking is this - there is extreme importance in control. If you were to ask William Borroughs, he would imply that we fear this. In fact, we struggle to understand the vulnerability of our powers - they are given to us by nature, the power of magic. You aren't just reading incantations, you're performing them. Disrupting the very same earth that gave us our abilities. It's very important," striding to the other side of the work bench, she picked up a water can and sloshed the water around inside. "To balance natural with supernatural."

"Miss Cordelia," another voice piped in. The girl was a natural redhead with splotches of freckles dotting her ashen face. She had similar appearance to a shrew with her narrow, long nose, and fragile-looking wrists. "Aren't we always interfering with nature? There can't possibly be a balance."

The blonde woman nodded as she finished watering the pink foxglove, resting between two overpowering ferns. "Dana, will you please move this by the window?" Dana willingly took the potted plant from Cordelia and lugged it towards the cracked-open portal. Sounds of late robins and cooing finches radiated through the small space, cooling the slightly muggy atmosphere inside. "And the answer to that, Rachel, is yes. We are interfering with nature, but in a measured way that, if correctly executed, can ultimately success the environment."

Cordelia waved her fingertips over the fraying leaves of a plant with grayish leaves that dripped seeds from garish pods. Some of the plants they grew reminded her of the giant fly traps from Jumanji. "That's why most of you girls don't develop your powers until you're older. You need control, because control means equity. You have to be mature enough to allow your skills to "interfere" with name-of-game boundaries."

"What about the people that develop their powers earlier than that, Miss Cordelia?" Another out of the fifteen or so voices piped up, a smaller girl with giant glasses that didn't quite fit her face. Her name was Winnie, one of the first files Cordelia could recall viewing after exposing witches to the world. Winnie was barely thirteen, but her power of Divination was incredible at such a young age. Needless to say, she was excellent at hide and seek. "How old were you?"

Pausing, the Supreme blinked for longer than she intended. Behind those eyelids, she saw the static image of a bony girl, pin straight hair cropped at her shoulders and free of bows or clips. Rather plain-seeming as she glanced back and forth at the swing opposite of her own. They were empty, swaying in the springtime breeze. Cautious, always cautious, she would close her eyes and set her hands in her lap and make the swing chains rattle with her mind. These were not very fond memories.

"I was very young, only nine. For some, it comes sooner than others. It's only natural, at least natural for us." Smiling, she handed Winnie the half-full watering can and the girl wobbled back and forth in her tattered rubber sneakers, carrying it to the counter. She stood on her tiptoes to water the ferns on either side of the foxglove, and Cordelia gestured for the girls to gather around the bench. "Now, what did we come in here for?"

XXX

She was past deep breaths, as the soles of her shoes had already crossed the threshold of the wrought iron gates. Turning her head slowly around on her shoulders, Love admired the regally positioned weirs; they were something part of Old Man Withers' mansion, straight out of a Scooby Doo episode on Boomerang.

And she could have sworn they had still been open a second ago. Come to think about it, she'd never heard them close behind them. Eerie, how quiet things seemed on the premises of this old place. The history was quite literally seeping in through the ground, wrapping like vines and climbing up her ankles.

"Miss Robichaux's Academy for exceptional young ladies." Her father cleared his throat and scratched his face for no reason. It was completely smooth shaven and free of whiskers. "Well, you're both young, and acceptional. Not to mention a lady."

"Dad." Love's teeth had begun chattering, so she started towards the building - a mansion really, a massive marble mansion kept somehow immaculately clean on the outside. There hadn't been a building within her sights as beautiful as this. She hadn't expected it to be so - white.

Mr. Checkauf followed her slowly, though not as unsure as her. God, she'd never been so unsure of anything in her life. Her fingertips were strangely icy as she reached to brush a loose lock of black hair from her rosy cheek. Supposedly, her dark hair came from her mother, but she wouldn't know. Whatever she looked like, Love knew she appeared more like her father than anyone else she knew. They were both wiry, and particularly average sized. Aside from the drastic hair color difference, they were peas and carrots.

The steps were glassy, made of granite if Love had to guess. The age seeped up through her legs again, timelessness permeating through the beat up rubber lining her shoes. She had no urge to rush up them; in fact, they creeped her out, but she ran up them anyway. The bengle bracelets lining her left wrist jingled against her pulse that hammered away in her wrist as she jogged towards the landing.

Love's father was far behind, resting at step number three. Love bit her lip guiltily while watching him struggle. He'd walked with a cane for quite a while now. His right knee was crushed in a car accident - she could remember being only thirteen, hiding in the doorway of the shitty old house her grandfather lived in, watching Terry's Tough Towing haul their accordion-ed station wagon into the gravel driveway.

"You're gonna have to visit me, huh?" Her father smiled, panting when he reached the top, and Love mustered a weak "I'm-surely-going-to-vomit" smile. "Too many damn steps. Suppose this place isn't made for old cripples though, so I'm the oddball."

"Dad."

"It's only an observation." He admitted, rolling his plain gray eyes back and forth between the spiraling plants positioned on either side of the large door. Love gulped and took her father's hand, wrapping her fingers in the warm creases. It felt like a coarse croissant, but it kept her chilly, bluish fingertips warm. Love knocked.

The door almost immediately swung open to her alarm, and she jumped back quickly. Her dad seemed startled too, but less so than his jumpy daughter. Anything could have scared Love on that doorstep though; a bunny rabbit, a daytime soap opera, a can opener.

"Hi." The boy who greeted them wore a spiffy purple button-up all the way up to his neck, and a deep satin bow tie to match in a darker lilac. It was strange, as if he'd been anticipating her knock and ultimate arrival. "How long you been standing there?"

"Eh..." Love bit her lower lip shyly, but Mr. Checkauf placed a hand on her shoulder and answered.

"Not that long."

The boy's eye twitched and Love wondered if her father caught it. His hand still on the doorknob twisted it constantly and quickly, like his nervous facial tick. He was like a lagged video game, though - it would suddenly stop and resume. Something was just millimeters off, she could swear it.

"Good. You have bags?" He smiled - a handsome smile. Love blushed as his eyes watched her hands knot at her stomach, which incidentally was twisting too.

"Not with us, uh - in the car." Love looked at her feet and cleared her throat. "Sorry."

"I'll get them." The boy suggested. He was much taller than both she and her father, and his hair was blonde with, dare she say, a slight curl. The way his body was positioned in the doorway, she could barely see inside of the academy, and she didn't know if she wanted to. But she didn't want the boy to leave her alone in this place, a stranger, even with her father.

"Kyle? Where have you-" a small girl ducked underneath the boy's (Kyle's?) arm that was draped across the doorway, looking up at him and back to Love and her father. "Oh. You found the guests?"

"They found me."

"Sorry." The girl smirked in a melancholy fashion, offering one small hand. "I'm sorta supposed to be the welcome wagon, but I'm not doing a fantastic job. I'm Zoe."

"Hi." Jesus. Why did she have to act so shy around strangers? Love honestly didn't care about what others thought of her. People were just people, they could move on if they didn't like her slightly unkept hair, raggedy cardigans, Cleopatra sandals. But suddenly, for some reason, she felt one in the same with Zoe. She could sense her depth, somehow, even through the atmosphere. She decided to extend her hand, clasping Zoe's tight. "I'm Love."

"And Love's father." Her dad spoke for the first time in quite a while. Outspoken might be a hefty word to describe him. Most of his talking he did with his daughter or his clients. He was an accountant, a straight up boring tax accountant.

"Great." Zoe didn't have many words yet, but she smiled. Kyle started playing with one of her loose pigtails, but she shooed him away with a piercing but loving glance. Almost a look you might give a child, or a puppy. "Why don't you go get Love's bags from the car, and I'll show them to Cordelia's office?"

Kyle pressed his chin to the top of Zoe's head - a type of hug, maybe - and moved between Love and her father, disappearing in a slightly lumbering gait towards the iron gates. He was strange, to say the least.

"I can give you a quick rundown," Zoe swung her arms at her sides, traipsing through the parlor hall. It was surprisingly still, as calm and tranquil as the white and silver backdrop. Girls milled around, talking as they tramped down the pearly staircases, calling back and forth between second floor bedrooms.

Lagging behind by her slow, limping father, Love gazed adoringly up at the crystal chandelier that was at least twenty-five feet up, suspending on the highest surface of the ceiling. The entire place was - well, much less creepy than she assumed it would be. "This is the parlor, we don't do much here accept track in mud. And this," Zoe sidestepped a girl with red braids into a large open space lined with cabinets. A butcher's table sat in the middle of the large room, aged wood with a dip-down crevice in the middle. "Is the kitchen. Do you want anything to drink?"

"Do you have milk?" Love stuttered, and Zoe shrugged, rummaging in the fridge until she surfaced with a bottle of chalky brown, sloshing it up and down in her hand like a Shake-Weight.

"Do you mind chocolate?"

She didn't mind, so Love uncapped it and swished the choco around in her mouth. The flavor hadn't permeated throughout the bottle, so she shook it and took a second swig as Zoe led them down another hallway.

The interior of Miss Cordelia Goode's office was everything Love expected it not to be. Ordinary was one word to describe it. A large Oxford dictionary laid open on one side of the desk, and a stack of Manila files lay untouched on the other. A clutter of pens and sharpened pencils were scattered across the surface, and a few refrigerator magnets were clipped to the side.

The office space was light and spacious as well, matching the marvelous spiral staircase she had seen on the way in. Two wings of steps broke off from the main, seeming to float in midair. It was surprisingly quiet inside. Love had expected it to be chaotic.

"Don't be nervous."

"I wasn't Dad, but thanks a lot." She hated waiting. In the past year she'd been to so many doctors and specialists, so waiting had a whole new meaning to her. Whenever someone came back, they'd stick her with needles or make her drink some chalky metal shit or whatever. She doubted they'd harm her here, but still, the uneasy feelings were still there.

As if her heart hadn't been beating fast enough before, the sudden creak of the door jarred her intensely, and she wheeled around in her chair to view the room's third occupant. This woman she immediately registered as the headmistress, somehow. Miss Goode literally glowed - maybe in only Love's eyes, but damn, she looked - she looked beautiful. Not just her looks, but she emanated health. Her blonde hair swung by her ears as she smiled with lips bird-like and maybe even a little thin, folding her pale hands on the desk.

"Sorry to keep you waiting." She shrugged sheepishly, meeting Love's eyes. Miss Cordelia's were the color of the chocolate milk. "It's nice to finally meet you in person Mr. Checkauf. And you, Love."

"You didn't um..." Love was nearly awestruck by the exuberant woman, somewhat of the reaction she might have to meeting one of the lead singers of her favorite band. But unlike a dyed-red punk, Miss Goode was an open-faced owlish woman with kind, gentle eyes. "We didn't wait long."

"Good." Cordelia picked at her otherwise perfect looking dark purple painted nails. "I trust Kyle has gone to retrieve your trunk?"

"Kyle..." Losing her train of thought, Love scrambled for a completed idea in her mind. There was nothing quite like meeting the Supreme for the first time. "Oh right, the tall moppy guy with the eye twitch." Mr. Checkauf sent his daughter a warning glance like daggers, but his daughter was oblivious in the presence of her new leader.

Cordelia smiled gently to herself, folding her hands over the piles of Manila folders, one of which, Love assumed, was her own records. "He's a hard worker." Her bell-like voice seemed to tinkle like the flutter of china in a garden. "He'll bring them up to your room within the hour. Then I'll have Zoe show you around the Academy."

"Your kindness is very much appreciated." Mr. Checkauf pulled out a seat across from the Supreme's and waited until after his daughter was seated before seating himself with more than a little struggle. It was hard for him to do even simple things like seating himself and it not only hurt, but frustrated Love to watch his suffering. "Love hasn't received as much... kindness from other institutes."

"Every one of our girls here is special in their own ways." Cordelia's gentle smile calmed the troubled girl and her now-relieved father. "Clairvoyance, divination, sensory... Each is considered a special gift and nothing less. We are very protective in the Academy, and Love will be safe without a doubt, I can assure you, Mr. Checkauf."

There was something overwhelmingly soothing about Cordelia's voice, like a reassurance that Love couldn't help but put all of her trust into. The Academy was not a prison, but a safe haven, meant for others like her. Other "different" young women. Or, what was it Miss Goode called it again? Gifted. The word floated down in her mind like an angel settling atop a cloud, like in one of the old calendar photos Love remembered seeing in her great grandmother's kitchen, years ago.

"I'll feel much better going home with Love safe here." Mr. Checkauf rested a hand gently on his daughter's somewhat bony shoulder, a gesture Love would have found annoying and unnecessary on any other given day. But this day was different; her father was leaving her today, hopefully in a place she would learn to call home with girls, no, other witches, she would come to trust. "We appreciate your kindness."

"No thanks is necessary, I'm sure." Cordelia rose from her chair, cradling a brown, unlabeled folder against her chest. Her slight heels clicked like a lizard's claws against the wooden floor, imitating the noise of a scuttling reptile, though the Supreme was much more graceful, to say the least. "I was just reviewing your file a moment ago, Love. It seems you are... quite gifted."

"Gifted." There was that word again. With a snort through her nose, Love leaned back and crossed her legs, holding onto her beat up Converse sneaker. "I don't think I'd exactly call this a gift."

The Supreme straightened herself, smile unfaltering as she traced her fingertips over the spines of the books on her shelf one by one, as if each were an intricate part of a system. Love tried to read some of the titles - none seemed to be in English. "Even the most unwanted of talents is precious. If you've got a gift - protect it. That's what you will learn here, Love."

"Yeah, well." The girl paused, meeting eyes with her father. Identical, some called them, but his had crinkled crow's feet at the edges as if for wise emphasis. "Will you teach me to put kibosh in this shit, get rid of these "gifts" all together?"

She could have easily watched Mr. Checkauf's expression contort into one of embarrassment and annoyance at her abruptness, but she kept her eyes on the headmistress. The short and breathy sigh beside her was enough to imagine said expression.

"Censoring your powers won't do any good, I'm afraid. You're special. Just like myself, and every other girl here. Sometimes, it takes a while to realize it." Miss Cordelia peered out the window shortly and glanced back to Love. It was hard not to notice the soft details of her face. Even in the most average of lights, she appeared sparkling, like a shiny glass of champagne. "To snuff out your abilities would be to stamp away who you are."

"Love," clearing his throat, her father sat up straighter, stretching out his bad leg and placing a hand on his knee. "I love you, baby. You're the most important thing in the world to me. But this - it's just getting out of hand. You need to learn." He placed a hand on her shoulder, but Love shrugged it off.

"Being a witch is an interesting existence." Cordelia chuckled, tapping her nails on her desk as she sat again, crossing her legs. She dressed a little bit like a librarian, but then again, if she wasn't wearing Crocs or plastic flip flops, Love wasn't going to judge. "I think you'll learn that it's much - different living with other witches. Satisfying, in a way. My - mother, she brought me here when I was only slightly younger than you. I felt alone, too, until I discovered that I could do a lot of good in the world with my abilities. There are plenty of -"

"Is that why you're the Supreme?"

"For the love of God..." Mr. Checkauf muttered under his breath, burying his face in one hand. "Love."

"No. It's alright." Miss Goode's smile perked the dimples in her cheeks as she reassured them with a nod of the head. "If you're going to be part of this coven, you deserve to know, as all girls living here do. The Supreme holds ultimate responsibility," she paused, seeming to roll the words over in her mind for a second, "Just think of me as your headmistress, Love. I'm here to help you control your powers. Not suppress."

Love couldn't help but think of the first call she'd got, weeks ago. She was sitting in her Eyore pajama pants and tie-dye shirt from seventh grade, eating peanut butter out of a giant container when the phone mounted on the kitchen wall jingled in its socket. She hadn't gone to school for four days, and the old, boxy television set blared an old rerun of Golden Girls. it was easy to forget that she'd been "selected" personally to attend the academy. She'd thought about it plenty, and come to think of it, now that witches had come out of the closet, there must be a lot of fakes dying to get the witch experience.

"I want to learn." She blurted, turning to her father with sullen eyes full of tears. "Dad..."

"I'm right here. And I'm going to visit. And you can visit too, deal?" He placed his rough hand on her head and stroked down the length of her raven-dark hair. "Listen, you're going to be a lot - happier here. With other people like you."

"You will be." The Supreme added, smiling again, a smile that was easily trustable. "And if you aren't, I can't chain you here and keep you. You're free to go, but as long as you're under this roof, I'm your legal guardian. I'm only here to guide you. Don't you want to be surrounded by others who are similar to you? Believe me, it's a relief."

Love certainly believed her. She wrapped her father in a hug. "Dad, I don't want you to be alone."

"Oh," Mr. Checkauf seemed surprised, but why would be be? Love was his only companion ever since she was little. He wasn't so used to this affection Love was giving him, as she mostly kept to herself out in the "real world", but he hugged her back, tucking his chin on her shoulder. "I'll be fine. I don't want you to stay home just because you're worried about me. It'll be a decision you'll regret."

Love squeezed her eyes shut. "Thank you."


	2. Sleepless

Tha k you for your support! I don't own any of the wonderful characters created by geniuses on American Horror Story :)

Sleepless

"Hey, girls!" Kyle slammed his fist against the painted-white finish of the door he stood outside of, calling through the crack between the frame and the wood. Love stood against her black trunk, purple backpack (an old Jansport she'd had forever) slung over one shoulder while Kyle knocked insistently until his knuckles were red. "What did Cordelia tell you about locking the doors? I ain't a snitch, but I'm pretty sure she told you today was the day your new-" the door flung open, accompanied by an eddy of Aeropostale perfume and acrylic paint. "Roommate was coming." Kyle finished to the girl who must have opened the door, now standing in the doorway. "Jesus, it smells like that store in the mall you need flashlights to shop in, what the hell are you doing in there?"

The girl took a whiff and shrugged, waving her hand in front of her nose. "Someone spilled something all over the floor, my best guess. Was about to call the maid to clean it up, but I see you're not in uniform."

Kyle rolled his eyes and fixed his crooked bow tie. "This is Love Checkauf. Your new roommate."

"Jan." the other girl thrust out her hand and shook Love's harshly. She was a tall girl, almost matching Kyle's over-average height, and her hair was of curly brown. From the get go, Jan seemed rather bookish and antsy, judging by the way she nervously scratched at her wrists as if she were self-conscious about her blemish-free skin. She reminded her, ironically, of Hermione Granger. "Welcome to the life of impish solitude."

Kyle carried her trunk into the room after setting her clunky argyle typewriter case near the dresser, and noisily set the trunk down at the foot of a bed clothed in a cream comforter, as were the other four beds at the room's corners. With her legs crossed one over the other, a girl who couldn't be older than sixteen scribbled in an empty journal, making not a sound but the soft whistling of her breath as she blew the hair from her face. Another girl laid on her stomach with her legs tangled in the air, flipping through a book and speaking under her breath. She didn't seem to notice them come in, but she continued to mumble.

"Hey, Carlotta!" Jan nearly yelled, and Love flinched at how loud she spoke in the presence of the other girl only feet away from them. "Look! Who's! Here!"

Carlotta barely flinched, but her mumbling stopped as she sat up gracefully, closing the old book with a splatter of dust into the air. "Speak louder next time." Pulling her silky hair to the side, she revealed a multi-colored hearing aid pushed into the socket of her ear, wrapped around the cartilage. It took her a few seconds to turn it back on, if it had been off before, and she only seemed to return to reality when she could hear again. "Love, it's nice you're finally here. Miss Cordelia told us about you. I'm Carlotta."

"Nice book." Love glanced at the upside down hardcover nestled in the sheets, but it was too hard to read the title upside down, if it were even in English. The books on the Supreme's shelves had all been in wanky Latin.

"Yeah, well..." Carlotta twirled her fingers around her canvas belt, licking her lips. Love couldn't help but notice her smushy lisp, but otherwise, her voice was gentle and sweet. "January doesn't warn me when people are coming in. Sorry you had to see me all catatonic and stuff - she knows I turn my hearing aids off to read." She shot a glance towards Jan that wasn't exactly a lovely one.

"Deaf perks." Jan shrugged halfheartedly, giving Carlotta a cheerful smile.

"Whatever. I'm glad to have you here." Carlotta stretched her arms behind her head and padded across the floor to a large fish tank, bubbler humming away in its mechanical way as two large goldfish skimmed the top of the water. She took the mesh top of the tank and sprinkled fish pellets, clamping to lid back on. "It will be nice to have someone to talk to other than Heather Chandler."

"Listen, Linda the Librarian, I can't remember the last time I put a toe through the doorway without stepping in some slime you've been cooking up-"

"That sounds like a you problem." Maybe those last words were supposed to be uttered under Carlotta's breath, but they came out loud and clear. It was easy to see turning off her hearing aids gave her little to no perception of noise.

"They aren't all bad." Kyle gave a crooked shrug directly towards Love, swiveling the toe of his black polished shoe on the floor. Love's eyes trailed across the wood surface - whatever "slime" Carlotta cooked up, it left multicolored stains in varying shades of green. "Once ya close the door, they're all over each other."

Luckily, Carlotta didn't seem to hear him, but Jan glared at the butler for more than a few seconds before flipping her hair to the side and scuffing her toe on the floor. But she didn't say anything.

"Ruthie." Changing the subject, Carlotta crossed the floor and tapped the other girl, who was yet to speak, on the bony shoulder. She was frail-looking, as if her skin was of tissue paper instead of coarse and durable linen. Ruthie's hair was blonde, pulled behind ears too large and clipped with bumpy black Bobby pins. "Meet Love, our new roommate."

Her eyes rolled up, Ruthie's. The pen had stopped scribbling across the page, and Love noticed smudges of blue and black ink across her fingertips and hands. After a longing glance, she managed a small smirk and focused back on her notebook.

"Hi." Love stated shyly, gasping when she felt Kyle's stiff hand clamp her shoulder rather harshly, yanking her towards the door.

He led her back downstairs where the chatter had grown slightly louder, but still containable. Witches seemed surprisingly - normal, for the most part. It was strange, Love noticed, the way that Kyle wove through the elegant mansion with the mastery of a topographer with one intent, like a rat that had been trained took locate cheese in a maze. He also held her hand the entire way, which was slightly unnerving. His palms were softer than she expected, not to mention that his hands felt too big, like they'd been someone else's. It was a ridiculous notion, but it was still an uncomfortable thought.

"What the hell was that for?"

Kyle gnawed his upper lip with his lower jaw. "No sense in talking to someone who won't talk back." He paused, pulling her to the side as a girl with pigtails toting a book at passed. His hand tightened around Love's, and his breath hitched, though he certainly wasn't short of breath. "You talk to Ruthie - that girl doesn't... Talk."

Love felt like reclaiming her hand, but that didn't appear to be in the cards. "Why?"

Kyle shrugged. "She came to us like that. We say "hey, Ruth! How's it going today?" And you know what we get? Nothing. Come on, kiddo." He grunted, yanking her with an oof and the collision of floor and shoes.

The girl who had shown up when Kyle answered the door, Zoe, sat amongst birch trees and firs, upright on a cement bench with a perfect view of the horizon. Her eyes were closed as she breathed deeply, leaves falling around her like swirling helicopters screaming mayday.

Kyle interrupted with the clearing of his throat quietly, and Zoe quietly started to life, pushing a stray lock of hair from her face. A smile hinted her face, a candle flicker compared to the roaring fire it could have been, and Kyle let go of Love's hand. She let it swing there awkwardly, biting her lower lip. The air was surprisingly crisp for Autumn, and her fingertips felt numb.

"Love's luggage is cozy in her new room." Kyle took both of Zoe's hands and lifted her to her feet, swinging their joined hands rather playfully.

Zoe breathed out once and turned to Love, brushing crispy leaf bits from the front of her shirt. "Good. Do you like it?"

Not exactly, but she shrugged and toyed with the toe of her sneaker, licking her dry lips. "It's fine."

"You'll get used to it. It just takes a night or two in a new place."

"Smelled like a porn shop in there." Kyle apparently felt the need to add.

"Good, then I can give you a tour while it's airing out. Come on."

Love followed Zoe silently for most of the tour, which was incredibly awkward, seeing as Zoe didn't seem like much of a chatterbox to begin with. But she did know some history on the place, and Love zoned in and out of that. It was built back in the late 1700's to serve as a private girls' boarding school and was repurposed as a military hospital during the Civil War, only to be reclaimed in the mid 1800's as a boarding school for witches. Love could feel the death in this place, seeping as it always seemed to in New Orleans, curling around her feet. It felt like she was wading through tar.

There was a greenhouse, located in a cobbled butch just to the west wing of the grounds, and it was. Year the emptiest place Love felt on the property. It was ironic, really, because it teemed with life - intricate vines of foreign plants spewing from pots and baskets, carefully organized tools hung on hooks with precision. The posture of the greenhouse was immaculate, but something was - missing. She felt it, strange as it was, and hard as she tried, she could t place it.

"This is where we practice potion craft. Cordelia's the whizz, really, I suck." Zoe smirked, twirling a pair of curved shears between her fingers. "It's kind of the sophisticated art of our abilities. My opinion, you either have it or you don't. Anyone can read an incantation, but feeling it - that takes practice."

"That'd explain my new roommates."

"Forgot you were rooming with two crows. Sorry, it sucks. A while ago, we had the space to sleep two to a room. In the twenties, the place was packed. Bunk beds, eight to a room."

"Damn." Love shook her head, striding past an aisle of heat lamps left to dry arid plants. "Zoe?"

"Mhm?"

Love swallowed and shook her head, peering out the window. A soft breeze festered the curtains as her glance faltered. "How long have you known? That you were a witch..."

Zoe took an extensive deep breath and pushed her pigtails behind her ears, anchoring them there with her hands. "It happened pretty - suddenly. I was dropped off here almost immediately after."

"Oh." Love played with her own hair, tugging the ebony locks to one shoulder then back to the other. Zoe half smiled and half frowned.

The two girls made it back across the courtyard-style lawn in the back, towards a rear door. A boy with hedge trimmers clipping the bushes lining the side of the house, blanketed in cedar chips, nodded towards them and smirked. He had auburn hair that glistened orange in the Autumn sunshine, and large glasses framed his pale face. "Nice earrings."

"Uh." Love grabbed for her earlobe and clasped the bronze snakes curling around the cartilage, suppressing a smile as Zoe held the door for her.

"I thought this was a girls' school."

"It is. That's the gardener." Zoe scuffed the heel of her black boot on the Academy floor, ridding it of a whitish scuff mark. "Smells like dinner's ready. Come on, we all eat together."

He looked a little young to be the "gardener", as Zoe called him; rather scrawny and boyish, ginger and freckled all the way down to his tarp and canvas landscaping gloves. She wondered if he was as strange as Kyle, whatever he had going on in his twitchy head.

The biggest table she'd ever seen was located in the dining hall. It reminded Love of the one from Beauty and the Beast that Lumiere and Clocksworth dance across in the Be Our Guest sequence, but in that case, the table only seated one girl, and this one seated everybody in the Academy. It was hard to count, but within the ballpark, she figured there were at least thirty other girls sitting underneath the dangling crystal chandelier.

Various foods were placed in crock dishes throughout the table; bits of macaroni and cheese splattered across the surface here, a splotch of green bean juice there. Love wasn't particularly hungry, so she stirred her food while chatter went on around her. She was stuck sitting between Carlotta and January, their quarreling nearly unbearable at the dinner table. She had to tear them apart more than once before dessert.

Miss Cordelia sat at the head of the table, Zoe and another girl, Queenie, to her left and right with Kyle beside Zoe. They were up each other's asses all the time, as Love had gathered. They were a slighting less annoying and more romantic version of couples that made out in the hallways. She'd learned earlier that Zoe and Queenie were the Supreme's council. It was no wonder she needed help running the coven. Some of the girls couldn't even keep grape juice off the tablecloths.

There were plenty of witches around her age, give or take a few years, and then there were a few children - no older than ten, if she had to guess the age of one of them, who wore glasses too big for her face. Instead of speaking, Love watched, as she always did. A moody-looking girl stirred a milkshake straw in her milk. The little girl toyed with mashed potatoes with a fork.

Miss Cordelia introduced Love to various people - honestly ones she couldn't quite find the heart to care about in this strange place. There was too much to take in, and it was hard to believe that only this morning she'd been lounging in the half-sinking living room of her and her father's sinking basement apartment eating Fruity Pebbles and watching the way too dramatic A Place In The Sun, and now she was dining in a regal antebellum mansion where everything was white. Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor seemed so far away now - Love could almost watch them disappear, like he Eiffel Tower as one drove away from Paris.

January slept in nothing but her underwear. Love discovered this when she unbuttoned her blouse and tossed it against the window with a smack of nylon pop buttons and the shiny scrape of fabric against glass when it slid down. She dropped her jeans and kicked them aside as well, sliding her pale fingers over her equally pale body.

"Show's over, Shlitz." Carlotta muttered, yawningas she kicked off her practical slippers and sat down on her bed. Her bright eyes glowed in the dimmed light, reflecting the furnishings - two dressers, and a vanity covered in bottles, tubes, and lotions belonging mostly to Jan. "Go the hell to sleep and stop scaring Love."

"Hearing aids off after ten." The other girl snapped, snapping the elastic of her perfect black lace panties. In fact, everything about January seemed to be perfect - her body, her clothes, even her handwriting and stupid things like the way she ate. The way she argued was like the way Athena cared for Odysseus in his time of need. Pure, and beautiful. It made Love sick to her stomach, so she plopped down on her bed and began to thumb through The Bell Jar, which she'd read multiple times. Her trunk sat unpacked at the foot of her bed, unorganized from her root for pajamas, but that could wait until tomorrow.

Ruthie entered the room quietly, as quiet as her apparent lack of words, and crawled into bed like a wounded bar fighter - one who had won, but still suffered the external wounds of the scuffle he'd been into. She barely spent a glance at the others before dozing off in the dim light of Carlotta's lamp.

"Goodnight." Carlotta simpering towards Ruthie's general direction and with a tiny click and intense ringing pulled her hearing aids one by one from their sockets, flopping her head on the pillow and eventually, her breaths became softer and creamier, like the pouring of syrup as she dreamt.

"You going to bed, roomie?" Jan stretched her arms behind her head and sunk into the pillows, sighing contently. "Or do your hot-rod fingers have other plans?"

Jan snickered, and Love made a point to move her hands far away from the hem of her pants. "What's that sound?"

"What sound?" The other girl's eyes peeled open slowly, an annoyed frown crossing her face.

"It sounds like..." Love pushed herself off her new mattress and padded to the wall, pressing her ear up against the plaster. She was right. It was music.

Every night that goes between

I feel a little less

As you slowly go away from me

This is only another...

The tune faded in and out.

"Don't mind that shit." Jan mumbled, pushing her arms above her head and underneath the top of the pillow. "She won't shut it off, no matter how hard you try. You one of those concilium types? They're always pretentious, assy-"

"Who?" Scraping her fingernails down the white paint, Love rested her temple against the wall surface, enjoying its coolness. "Whose room is on the other side?"

"It's Cordy's room. I know, right? Figures we get stuck wall-to-wall with the woman who never shuts a damn eye."

Love's fingertips curled against the wall tighter, as if she meant to grasp the milky melodies and carry them to bed with her.

So I try to say goodbye, my friend

I'd like to leave you with something warm

But never have I been a blue calm sea

I have always been a...

Always been a storm...

"I know this song." She insisted, flattening her palm, but it curled again as if on its own will. "I've heard it before. Somewhere."

"So, you happen to have the same music taste? One in a million, valentine, go to sleep." Jan turned over, half-asleep, waving her hand over her head. "Before I make you."

XXX

Carlotta had one of those old fashioned alarm clocks - anti-digital with type-font numbers and five tick marks in between each. It was Mickey Mouse themed - the kind you get from Disney World, or a garage sale when whomever bought it figures out it was a waste of twenty-five bucks. Mickey's long hand, white gloved and puffy, told the hour, and his short equally fat hand told the minutes. Tick. Tick. Tick. There were no tocks, and that was driving her mad.

Love curled on her side, turning towards the window. Coldness, all she felt was the frozen tundra awaiting her in the other side. Sighing deeply, her eyes rolled to the lump in the neighboring bed. Jan was curled in the tightest ball possible, sleeping like the sneezing turtle Morla from The Neverending Story. She barely moved a muscle, and Love was certain of this from watching her sleep for the past few minutes. She slept so soundly, in fact, that she appeared to be laid out in her coffin, dark hair fanned on the pillow like abstract art.

Sleep was an escape, as Love read on her expressionless, content face. She could barely remember a time that sleep didn't mean harsh, crushing secrets, unwanted secrets that lurked below the surface of the known. Sleep tugged at her eyelids, but everything in her heart thumped no no no. The dark circles under her eyes burned.

Suddenly, she was unaware as to whether or not she was asleep or awake. Valley girl dreams of pool parties and Channing Tatum did not dance in her head; instead, the surface of her new bedroom transformed into an empty space, furniture sinking into the hardwood floors as if it were made of lava. Love's breath materialized into smoky stacks as she pulled the blankets back and swung her legs over the side of the bed. The warmth of her feet on the frosted floor caused steam to rise as she padded towards the three empty beds. Carlotta's clock tick tick ticked, but there were no numbers on the clock. Only a lonely Mickey Mouse with contorted arms.

"Jan?" She whispered, but barely any sound came out. Her three roommates were gone, missing. She was always left alone here. Once, she'd considered the fact that being alone and experiencing such turmoil was her own version of this suffering, but she'd brushed the idea over. She'd never journeyed that far before.

She opened the door with a creak, but did not find the hallway leading towards the elegant staircase. Instead, she found herself in a gymnasium - the old auxiliary kind with wooden floors smelling of pine sol and scooter marks left across the varnish. The balmy air caused a bead of sweat to glisten on her nose as she padded cautiously into the high-ceilinged space, glancing around nervously.

Carlotta, dressed in fluttering red gym shorts and a t-shirt with Durand Ducks scrawled across the chest, dribbled a basket ball up and down in her lithe palm, panting as a strand of brunette hair dangled in her face like an angler fish's lure. Converse sneakers scuffed on the wooden gym floor, and the dank smell of sweat and berry deodorant wafted towards Love's nose.

"Jane, did you see Mad Men last night?"

The other girl completely ignored her, brushing by as if she were nothing but an apparition, a candle flame flickering back and forth, or one of the tiny dots in television statics. Discouraged, Carlotta fidgeted with the barrel of her right hearing aid, tossing the ball to another girl, chunky with braces and slightly pigeon-toed feet.

"Tiffany,what's wrong with you?" She dribbled the ball, almost involuntarily. "Don't you - don't you hear me?"

Every single girl was oblivious to her words. Given, she was slightly hard to understand as she spoke so frantically with her slushy lisp, but she was understandable enough.

Becoming confused and heartbroken, Carlotta grabbed the shoulders of a stringy girl with a high blonde ponytail, shaking her as her lip trembled, a dam threatening to break. "Listen to me!"

The others milled around, dribbling plump basket balls, shooting hem into nets. A few ricocheted off the high beams and bounced towards Carlotta's feet. She wheeled around, voice echoing throughout the gymnasium.

"Can't you hear me?! LISTEN TO ME! PLEASE, LISTEN TO ME!" Falling to her knees, bare palms clapping the floor, she let out a wallpaper peeling shriek, howling and baying, but no one paid any attention. It was as if she wasn't there. Basket balls dribbled. Baskets were made, baskets were missed. It was like a flip book; when it began, the scene played through, and when it ended, the devil's fingers began again, flipping through the sorry scene.

It was easy. An exit sign glowed above the gymnasium door, and Love calmly walked across the high school tundra, pulling at the heated, germ-infested handle and exited.

"You get an F."

Jan looked up from her book, snapping it closed on top of the desk. "No, no, that can't be right. I studied all night for this test, I can't - I can't -"

Love closed the door in the quiet classroom. Most of January's classmates were milling away at busy work - and they looked gray, shaded by the flickering classroom lights above that created the essence of not real.

The teacher, a prim woman with a pin tacked to her lapel pocket and a glasses chain linked around her neck lifted a stack of papers and watched them flutter towards Jan's desk. "You get an F."

January stuttered, hands clasping at the sides of her blue plastic chair as tears began to stream down her cheeks. Her shaking hands sifted through piles of blank white papers labeled F, F, F...

January's Hell, unoriginal as it was, faded around her. Love was in the main sitting room of the academy - light streamed through the mansion's windows, treating a silver light through the tampered curtains.

A weighted whimpering came from the center of the floor, and Love reached for Miss Cordelia, the Supreme. She barely knew her. She was nice enough, glowing in that certain way she assumed she always did, although that same silk worm light did not emanate from her now.

"Miss - Cordelia?" Love whispered, and Cordelia's body, which had been bent in a protective stance over a lifeless body, unraveled to reveal a stiff woman, graying in the face with limp blonde curls, in her embrace. Blue veined trees crept up the temples of the cadaver, fingers clenched at her own chest as if she'd died of a broken heart. She must have been beautiful once; wrapped in a flowering colors that might have once danced across a stage, but now she lay dead, rotting in the Supreme's careful arms.

"No, no..." Her whimpering persisted as Miss Cordelia grasped for the life that had long since breathed out of her counterpart, and the body flopped from her arms, mouth gaping open in a brown scream. Love couldn't help but watch her cry, watch her experience this inner turmoil. Part of her wondered who the woman was - the curly-haired blonde contorted on the floor, the girl her headmistress cried for. Who she was was the question without an answer, but a helpless love lined Cordelia's features as she rocked back and forth.

Love sat crisscross on the rug, sighing as she watched. It was hard to peel her eyes away from this type of endless suffering. The frozen-hearted coldness called to her like a guitar screamed "play me". And this place was an instrument of its own.

"Misty... Misty." Cordelia whispered as tears cascaded down her nose.

Love bit her lip. "Miss Cordelia?"

Slowly, in a nightmarish way, Cordelia turned her head as if it were filled with concrete. Looking into her deep, dark eyes filled with pain and reflecting confusion. The second the the two of them made eye contact, the academy walls dissolved into nothing and, as always, Love Checkauf was left in a bright, white nothingness.


End file.
